Creating Building Blocks

After you have set your default Positions, but before you begin creating new plays and drills, you will want to spend some time creating your Building Blocks, which will become the foundation to begin many of your plays and drills. Building Blocks are a time saving tool, that allows you to create formations or commonly run plays and use them as templates when creating more plays. This means you don’t have to keep re-drawing similar actions each time you want to begin a play with a similar formation.

To create a new Building Block, click the New Play icon to start a new play.

Select “New Play”. In the new play menu window that will appear, you have the option to create a Play or a Building Block, which you can select using the drop down menu in the top right corner next to “Type:”. Select Building Block to get started.

The Season, Team, and Series labels can be selected for each new Building Block or Play, and you can add new Teams or Series using the “Add…” button. Adding each of these labels will improve your ability to organize your library and more easily find your plays as your library grows.

In addition to adding labels to your play, you can also adjust the court appearance from the New Play menu. When creating a Building Block or Play, be sure to adjust the “Service Zone” and “Side Zones” option to match your preferences. When you enable or disable each option, this will in turn affect which lines are included in the diagram.

*As a best practice, make sure to disable the Service Zone and Side Zones options if you do not require them in your diagram. When enabled, these areas will still be included even if no players are placed there, and your diagram will be reduced in size to accommodate the added zones.*

Adding Building Blocks to your Play Diagram - To add a Building Block to your Play diagram, click the Building Blocks palette, where your Building Blocks will appear in a menu, organized by Series name. When you select a Building Block, it will automatically be added to the first frame of your new play.

*Note: Only the first frame of a Building Block can be added to a new Play, so it’s best to limit any Building Blocks that you create to just one frame.*